"If something's not working well, abandon it" is pretty pathetic advice. There are very clear ways to fix the problem, the only cause for pessimism is whether the people in charge will do the right things.
Are there, though? You can play armchair city planner all you want, but where is the political, legal, regulatory, etc, environment that allows this "very clear" fix to proceed? Who's to say that even with a big fare increase and a lot of money pushed in, that money won't mysteriously disappear while things don't get any better - as has happened historically?
Sometimes an entity DOES need to fail, and fail hard, before it can really be restructured entirely.
I live in Manhattan. Love it. The MTA fucking up is still miles ahead of every other American city on their best days in terms of transit and density. Most New Yorkers’ stories of nightmarish delays find parity with the daily commutes Americans across the country put up with as a matter of course.
I prefer living places where I'm not reliant on owning a car, and when I was moving back to the states there were only a handful of metro areas I felt this was possible in without it being inconvenient.
There are many issues like this in which the resolution is really clear on an intellectual level. When it involves screwing the existing stakeholders, it should not be surprising when those stakeholders use all the leverage they have to resist being deprived of what they have.
For example: Medicare is broke, it doesn't take 195 space alien IQ to see that you have to implement means testing to make the system fiscally whole, but good luck proposing it because you will be annihilated politically if you do. It does not take having a giant 900 pound brain to see that you have to screw the union and blow up the MTA to fix the system. But good luck doing it. And it makes perfect sense for the average AARP member to send in their contributions to protect their entitlements under the law even if they understood intellectually that the government cannot afford to maintain that entitlement in the future.